When I get picky and need something unusual to read, I often go to Cory Doctorow’s blog, plurasitic.net. As an example, tonight I was reading about his March 3rd 2025 entry “Trumpism is our oil crisis” in which he vilifies Milton Friedman (rightly so) and delivers a new twist to my understanding of Friedman’s history. … [Read more…]
Stealing (copying) directly from Science News: Why some chaos-seekers just want to watch the world burn This article is an interview with political scientist Kevin Arceneaux of the research university Sciences Po in Paris, France. In it, he and the author Sujata Gupta discuss this very relevant aspect of human behavior. Arceneaux helps us understand … [Read more…]
Just finished reading I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. (gift link) and realize now that there is a brain eating fungus out there that has manifested itself in key spore producers like MTG and Loomer et al. At … [Read more…]
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/10/lawson-obit-civil-rights-martin-luther-king-00162585 Civil rights leader James Lawson Jr. dies at 95 The pastor was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and an advocate of nonviolent protest. By Associated Press 06/10/2024 05:44 PM EDT The Rev. James Lawson Jr., seen here in California in 2019, taught Gandhian principles to young civil rights activists … [Read more…]
(The events in Moscow unfolded as I wrote this, it isn’t aimed at the current events except tangentially.) I finished this review in the New York Review of Books and wanted to share it. It is a long review, but rather fascinating for someone who knows next to nothing about this history, it filled in … [Read more…]
Charles V. Hamilton, an Apostle of ‘Black Power,’ Dies at 94 He popularized the term “institutional racism” and, with Stokely Carmichael, wrote a book in 1967 that was seen as a radical manifesto. “Equitable distribution of power must come from mutual self-interest, not altruism or guilt feelings,” Dr. Hamilton wrote
The Worlds I See by Dr. Fei Fei Li, borrowed from my local library after a two month wait in the queue. This is a “Moment of Lift” book which supports “publishing original nonfiction by visionaries working to unlock a more equal world for women and girls.” I didn’t know this until I had finished … [Read more…]
Place holder for The Guardian article “Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists” “We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper which proposes that climate breakdown is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate … [Read more…]
In The Guardian, an essay on recent findings of historian Hannah Durkin showing the arrival of slave ships in Cuba as late as 1872. Historians have generally assumed that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but it actually continued into the following decade, according to new research. Dr Hannah Durkin, an historian and former … [Read more…]
Non-fiction Finished the 524 pages of “The Dawn of Everything, A New History Of Humanity” by Davids Graeber and Wengrow. A challenging book, well written and somewhat academic in tone, both authors are professors at their respective British schools, Graeber of economics and Wengrow of comparative archeology. The authors propose that there were actually few … [Read more…]